


A Slow Dance for Two

by Commodore_Enigma



Series: The SWAT Captain and the Detective He Loved [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy(ish) Ending, Basically it's a silly hypothetical I enjoyed writing, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Non-Graphic Violence, One Shot, POV Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-12-07 22:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20983271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commodore_Enigma/pseuds/Commodore_Enigma
Summary: In which Captain Allen is wounded during the fight at Hart Plaza with machine Connor, and Gavin Reed shows up to help finish things.One-shot.11/17 UPDATE: Continuation scenes added- now it no longer has an open/ambiguous ending.





	1. Now You've Seen My World in Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for the title and some of the ideas for this one shot (such as Reed and Allen's dynamics during certain parts) goes to Autumn_Ashes here on ao3. He's awesome, and I deeply appreciate how he endures my various ramblings and enthuses with me on ideas and headcanons for this rare pair that I'm so invested in.  
Since Captain Allen doesn't have a first name (which, to this day, I think is a travesty), I had to choose one myself- Kent (short for Kenton).  
This has the slightest mention of events from my other ReedAllen work "Knives and Alcohol Don't Mix", but reading that for context isn't necessary.  
Chapter titles are taken from the lyrics of "The Only Thing Worth Fighting For" by Lera Lynn- I listened to it for like half the writing process of this whole thing, so even though it doesn't fully match up to this little story it's connected to it in my mind.

He heard the shot ring out. He saw how Gavin moved to hold his right arm, shouting out in pain. 

Connor began to take aim at Gavin’s head, stepping towards him. 

His blood ran cold, the feeling taking precedence over the mixture of already fading adrenaline and the practiced neutrality of combat.

Kent had lost all three of his men already. The thought that he’d kill Gavin, too… that was enough to drive him onwards.

Doing his best to ignore the increasingly searing pain in his side, Kent took aim and fired, managing to hit Connor’s shoulder.

Connor kept his grip on the gun and pulled the trigger, but missed Gavin as he ducked, taking cover behind one of the vents.

As Connor turned the corner to confront him, Kent shot him once more in the side.

Connor took another step forward. A gunshot rang out. Connor collapsed to the ground, dead.

Fucking androids. What should have been a simple detainment had turned into a bloodbath.

Hand covering his blood-soaked abdomen, he began to walk towards where Gavin was emerging from his place of cover. Kent’s head was starting to feel light, and his legs were weakening.

He managed to get ahold of a dispatcher; “I need an immediate medical evac at Hart Plaza…. I and another officer have gunshot wounds. Three of my men are dead.”

“I’m sending an ambulance... It may take a while though.”

Kent stumbled, barely managing to catch himself. He cursed at himself for being shot, at Connor for relentlessly taking down his men, at the state of the city slowing down the paramedics. The gunshot was burning, and his breaths were too short and shallow.

“Shit!” Gavin hissed as he ran up to him, “You need to settle down.” He wrapped his good arm around Kent’s waist and guided him down in front of the vent, the two of them collapsing side by side.

Leaning against the metal, Kent turned to look at Gavin as much as he could, pulling a tourniquet out of one of his vest pockets. “What the hell are you doing up here?”

“I had a score to settle with the plastic prick,” he knelt in front of Kent, brows furrowed. He lightly took ahold of his chin and turned his head left and right with shockingly cold fingers. Kent flinched a bit when Gavin’s touch went over where Connor had struck him.

Kent took the tourniquet in both his increasingly unstable hands.

“For fuck’s sake Kent, keep pressure on your wound! You’ll bleed out!”

“So will you if I don’t-” Gavin pressed his hands firmly to his vest, above the entrance wound. 

“...fuck!” Kent hissed at the pain brought on by the action. “It’s not like this will last long,” he added, managing to secure the tourniquet above the gunshot wound on Gavin’s upper arm before sitting back. 

Gavin continued pressing his bare hands, which were already coated with blood. He shook his head, exasperated, as his voice began to waver; “God, you’re such a hypocrite, you know that? Lecturing me on keeping pressure on a simple laceration all those years ago, and then you go and ignore that with your own fucking _ gunshot _.”

So Gavin still remembered that night, from all those years ago. Kent smiled for the briefest of moments at that; what a strange memory to recall with fondness. But he stopped himself from thinking back further; knowing the memories would make him feel like he was a dying man looking back at his life.

And he couldn’t be dying. Not yet.

Gavin’s hands were shaking, and Kent could see the fingertips on his less bloodied hand were tinted an alarming shade of pink.

His hands had been so icy. Kent decided to remedy that; he needed something to ground him before the paramedics got to them. Whenever that was going to happen.

Fighting the sluggishness in his limbs, he covered Gavin’s hands with his own, intertwining his fingers with Gavin’s. Even though he couldn’t feel them through his gloves, the indirect contact put some part of him at ease, a welcome feeling amongst the pain and faintness.

Gavin looked at him, eyes glistening. “What’re you-”

“God, you’re…” Kent took a shaky breath, “...such an idiot… not wearing gloves... are you trying to get frostbite?”

“You’re worried about my fingers when you’ve been fucking _ shot _in the abdomen?!”

Kent shook his head, dismissing Gavin’s comment. He regretted the motion as his vision spun. “I’ve been shot before,” he gritted his teeth, focusing on Gavin’s tourniquet to steady his gaze, before continuing, “I’m not going to let a fucking android of all things be what kills me.” 

Gavin nodded at that, sniffling. “Good… cause if you die, I swear to god I’ll fucking _ kill you _,” his voice broke with the threat.

Kent scoffed at that. “That made no goddamn sen-”

Gavin’s lips cut off his sentence, pressing desperately to his own. He wrenched his hand loose from their tangle of fingers to cup his chin, his touch still cold.

That, too, made Kent feel slightly more at ease.

Their breaths shuddered as Gavin pulled away, looking him in the eyes, his thumb tracing over Kent’s cheek.

Kent kept his focus on Gavin as he continued stroking his cheek; noting his shining eyes and the tear trails that traced down his face.

That made Kent feel worse. If only he wasn’t at risk of bleeding out; he wanted to reach his hands up to his face and wipe the tears away. Or just be able to hold him.

“The tourniquet… is it working?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Kent leaned his head back against the vent, closing his eyes. Despite the distractions, the pain remained unbearable, and he was feeling so _ tired_.

Gavin’s hand patted his cheek, “Hey, don’t you fucking dare fall asleep on me. Stay with me, Kent,” he pleaded, voice thick with emotion. He shifted onto Kent’s lap, his hand pressing down the slightest bit more onto the gunshot wound, and Kent had to stop himself from crying out as the pain flared up.

There was a ringing in his ears, but through it he swore he could hear the distant wail of sirens.

Gavin pressed his face into Kent’s neck, murmuring, “Just a little longer… don’t you fucking leave me.”

Weakly, he managed, “I won’t.” He paused, before continuing quietly, “Just know... if something does happen to me I… I love you.”

Gavin let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob, “Don’t fucking say it like that, Kent. You’re going to be okay and you can’t tell me otherwise.” He kissed Kent again, short and gentle, before burying his face back in Kent’s neck, adding in a hushed tone, “I love you too, idiot.”

Kent opened his eyes, his surroundings unfocused. Maybe it was just an illusion, but there appeared to be faint red and blue lights flashing off to the side of a building, and a siren echoed nearby.

He was too tired to keep looking. So he closed his eyes again, everything going black.


	2. You Cannot Take That from Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the third chapter continue what happens to the two of them- hopefully it brings something to the original one-shot. I've had it written for a while, but figured it was worth adding to make the ending less ambiguous.

Gavin’s heart plummeted as Kent shut his eyes and slumped back, his firm grip on Gavin’s fingers loosening.

“Shit! Kent. KENT!” the wail of the sirens echoed up to the rooftop, intermingling with his pained shouts. “Don’t you fucking do this to me; wake up!” he slapped at Kent’s cheek, “You have to wake up! C’MON, WAKE UP! _ Please_, Kent...” His fingers fumbled to the side of his neck, pressing into skin that Gavin could have sworn looked paler. Kent still had a pulse, but it was weakened and fluttered alarmingly.

No. _ No_.

This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose him.

He heard the scraping of metal on concrete and snow. There were hurried footsteps and someone exclaiming, “There they are!”

“Kent, don’t you…” his words choked on a sob as he pressed his nose into Kent’s cheek, wrapping his arm around his back, “don’t you fucking leave me, you hear me? You better fuckin’ fight this, old man.” He almost couldn’t recognize his own voice, rough from his panicked shouts and shakily rambling to the unconscious man. He pressed his blood-soaked hand harder into Kent’s wound, his arm burning in pain with the motion. Kent didn’t respond.

The footsteps grew closer, and Gavin pulled Kent to him, holding him tightly as he pleaded, ragged breaths interrupting his words: “Come back to me, old man. _ Please_! You can’t die…. I need you. I love you... I love you so fucking much. Just please, please _ for the love of god _ don’t die on me… Stay with me...”

A voice from behind him stated, detached: “Sir. Please move away from him, we need to get him down to the ambulance as fast as possible.”

Gavin’s breath was unsteady as his whole body trembled, the tears on his face going cold. He shook his head, “I… I can’t leave him. He could _ die_, he doesn’t have a tourniquet on, I have to stop the bleeding-”

A paramedic knelt next to him, pressing a tourniquet under Gavin’s hand as much as she could. “Sir, you need to move _ now._ If we can’t get him to a hospital soon, he may not survive. You need to get checked out, too.”

Gavin held on to Kent defiantly, “I- I can’t leave him,” his head spun as he feebly tried to take deeper breaths, “I can’t let him die.”

The paramedic sighed in exasperation, moving to pry Gavin’s arm off Kent’s back as hands wrapped under his arms, pulling him back and away from Kent.

“FUCK OFF! I CAN’T LEAVE HIM!” he roared as he attempted to struggle free, but he was dragged away; and the paramedics quickly moved in, securing the tourniquet and moving Kent onto a stretcher. His upper right arm felt incinerated, and he growled through the pain as he wrenched free with his other arm, “Fuck off! I can’t let him die, I _ need _him! He’ll bleed out and I-”

“Sir, if you don’t calm down we’ll have to sedate you…”

His heart was thundering out of his chest as he snarled, “I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” before continuing, broken and rough, “he’s dying… I have to get to him, you assholes don’t fucking understand-”

He was pressed into the ground, his left sleeve rolled back as a needle poked him.

“FUCK!” Gavin tried to crawl towards Kent, who was being carried away on the stretcher, but the weight on his back prevented him from moving. He continued through gritted teeth as fresh tears rolled down his face; “You fuckers don’t understand…. I have to get to him… I can’t leave him alone,” his words began to slur as he felt drowsy, too exhausted to move. The weight lifted up off him, and he was rolled over onto his back. Two of the paramedics looked down at him as they pulled him onto a stretcher.

He heaved a sob, quiet and pathetic, “I can’t let him die… I… I can’t…”

Somewhere after being loaded in the back of the ambulance, he drifted out of consciousness.


	3. My Small Reprieves, Your Heart of Gold

Though his senses and body felt like white noise, he was aware of the steady beep of a heart monitor, his right side largely numb.

Everything seemed so… foreign. Sterile. Like he shouldn’t be here.

Gavin tried to think, but everything was a haze. He nodded off again.

When he woke, he grew aware of how white the room was, and once more Gavin noticed the quiet incremental beeping from somewhere next to him. Light filtered through the blinds to his side. The fuzzy edges to his senses were largely gone, and there was a stiffness and soreness in his right arm.

It took him a few moments to remember what happened. The shootout, clinging desperately to Kent before he was dragged away.

_ Kent_. Oh, god.

Gavin sat up, his body protesting at the sudden movement. 

Where was he? Was he alive?

He looked over, and saw a curtain obscuring the source of the heart monitor, another bed behind it.

Gavin moved off the bed; though his head spun and he had to stop himself

from toppling over by grasping it again. 

He had to find Kent. He had to be alive.

He strode, legs slightly wobbly, through the gap between the wall and the curtain, heart thundering.

Just as he was deciding which interrogative skills he would use on the hospital staff, he looked over at the hospital bed. 

His prior thoughts were abandoned as he caught his balance on the wall.

It turned out that no grilling already overworked hospital personnel would be needed. There lay Kent. 

_ His _ Kent. 

His eyes were closed, but the heart monitor attached to him confirmed he had a pulse, slow but steadier than it had been on the rooftop.

Memories of the rooftop came back to him in a flood. 

Connor shooting Kent as he cried out in pain, Gavin rushing in in a fit of rage and spite to save the last surviving SWAT officer, fueled further by the fact Connor had shot his _ lover _of all people. Kent prioritizing Gavin’s less critical injury, being the selfless idiot he was. Then confessing his love in a voice so unlike him, so _ frail _that Gavin’s heart wrenched at what the man before him had been reduced to, which took precedence over the fact he bluntly informed Gavin he _ loved _him. The way he felt Kent begin to slip away under his touch, the pain and blood loss overwhelming him despite Gavin’s best efforts to keep him awake.

His eyes stung as he rushed over to his side.

Kent’s brow was furrowed, and his left cheek and jaw were already shaded with the beginnings of bruising. He remembered his attempts to wake Kent, the weight of guilt taking over him as he realized some of that was likely his doing. 

Gavin combed back a few loose hairs that had begun to fall on Kent’s forehead, and brushed the back of his fingers across Kent’s uninjured cheek, a lump forming in his throat.

He pulled up the visitors’ chair and sat down, taking Kent’s hand in his own, holding it securely as his fingers ran over the calluses. Kent’s hand was limp, but warm. A reminder he was, even in his sleeping state, alive.

Gavin hid his face on Kent’s arm, clinging to his hand.

He could feel the tremors of anxiety overwhelm him again. Kent might be stable; but until Gavin heard his voice strong and steady and saw the usual alert shine to his eyes, he couldn’t relax.

He waited apprehensively at Kent’s side. At some point, a doctor and nurse entered the room.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Reed?” the nurse asked.

He turned to look at them, annoyed at the sudden intrusion, “I’m fine. What happened with him?” gesturing back towards Kent.

“Looks like he’s doing okay… he’ll wake up in the next couple hours most likely. It was a stressful surgery, but he pulled through.”

The doctor added, “You should get back into your bed, you’ll still be near him and you won’t be at risk of reopening your surgical area.”

Gavin felt a persistent soreness to his arm, the sedation fading off. He shook his head, “I’m not leaving him. Not until I see him awake for myself.”

They gave him a look of resignation thinly masked by professionalism, and left after noting Kent’s vitals on a tablet.

He knew he was being one of _ those _ patients. But he didn’t care. There was no way he was going to leave Kent’s side, and it wasn’t like he was trying to do push ups post-surgery. He wasn’t quite that arrogant.

He continued to wait, the sound of the heart monitor becoming white noise as he tried to keep his thoughts from assuming the worst, fingers stroking at Kent’s hand, seeking out the familiar rough and soft spots.

As time went on, his anxiety rose and his thoughts worsened.

They said that he was doing _ okay_. Not _ fine_.

What if he was actually dying, despite the surgeons’ best efforts? Or was he in a coma, that he might or might not come back from?

Gavin had fought against the paramedics… he could have prolonged medical attention the slightest bit too long, and Kent could have lost too much blood. It was his own fault Kent wasn’t awake yet, wasn’t it? Of course he’d fuck up things eventually, fail the one person he truly loved in the end-

The arm beneath him stirred, and Gavin’s head shot up.

Kent’s eyelids fluttered open, eyes briefly unfocused as he glanced sleepily around the room. When his eyes locked with Gavin’s, he didn’t look away, eyes widening. He roughly whispered, “_Gavin_.”

Gavin let out an uneven, breathless laugh. Of course he’d wake up as Gavin feared he was going to lose him. Tears blurred his vision even though he tried to fight them away; and though his words wavered, he lectured; “I told you not to fucking fall asleep on me, you dumbass.”

Kent moved his arm, and Gavin let go of his hand with a twinge of regret. He lifted his hand up, fingers brushing over Gavin’s nose scar and cheek before he weakly cupped his chin, tracing over Gavin’s stubble as he leaned in to the touch. 

Kent’s eyes glistened as he took in the sight of Gavin before him. “You’re… it’s really _ you_,” he whispered reverently, voice breaking.

Gavin desperately wanted to leap onto the older man and pull him in for a crushing hug; the thought highly tempting despite both of their injuries. But he didn’t want to harm him further, so instead he blinked away tears and nodded the slightest bit, glancing down and covering Kent’s hand with his own. “Yeah… yeah, it’s me… Don’t you _ ever _ do that again, Kent,” he croaked out, a sob escaping him before he continued, “I… I thought you were _ dead_.”

Kent wiped at tears beginning to fall with his thumb, shakily apologizing; “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry; I shouldn’t have made you worry-”

His heart sank at Kent’s faltering voice and glistening eyes. He shouldn’t have been in more pain than he already was. 

Gavin managed to stop himself from sobbing more, in order to weakly protest, “No, don’t, Kent… it’s okay… it’s not your fault... _ I’m _sorry.” 

“What for?”

Gavin just shrugged weakly, thoughts too much of a mess to decipher. All he could think of saying was, “That… that all that shit happened.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Gavin. You don’t have to apologize,” Kent busied himself wiping away the tears that had accumulated and Gavin focused in on the sensation. Kent brought his hand, still intertwined with Gavin’s, back to his side.

As Kent traced slow circles with his thumb into Gavin’s palm, his breathing evened out.

Kent occasionally murmured the same reassurances over and over, both to himself and Gavin, his voice slowly growing even; “We’re fine, Gavin. We’re alive. I’m okay; and you’re okay. I’m not going anywhere, I promise; I won’t leave you,” and Gavin focused on his voice, finding comfort in its growing familiarity even with the influence of sedation. The tears eventually stopped, exhaustion taking over his eyes.

After sitting in relative quiet for a while Gavin sat up, leaning over the bed to kiss him briefly, before pressing his forehead to Kent’s, the two of them letting out a long sigh, breaths intermingling. Kent observed him with an uncommon softness that, as always, gratified Gavin.

Gavin sat back down and rested his head on Kent’s side, letting his eyes close as the exhaustion from the emotional turmoil of the day took over him. He repeated phrases similar to Kent’s reassurances: _ We’re fine. We’re alive. Kent’s going to be okay. He’s not going anywhere_.

It wasn’t quite the same as hearing it from Kent, but that combined with the sound and feeling of Kent’s breathing made him relax further.

For now, everything was okay. They’d face the aftermath together.


End file.
